


Mr. Magpie

by MDJensen



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Gen, Sick Steve, Steve is a clothes magpie, Warm Fuzzies, aka he needs a hug but doesn't know how to ask, also mention of character death, and other stuff, just a tiny fic, mostly devoid of dialogue, so he steals clothes instead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:21:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25136101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MDJensen/pseuds/MDJensen
Summary: Whether or not he meant to start it, eventually this is just a Thing Steve Does.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 75





	Mr. Magpie

**Author's Note:**

> Full credit for this goes to everybody who left comments on my last fic, _Of Morphine and Minivans_. Everybody seemed to like (as did I!) the idea of Steve keeping Jerry's hoodie. sue2556 and 1234irrek specifically called out the fact that he probably kept it for when he needed comfort down the line, and renecdote suggested that Steve is legitimately a clothing magpie. I thought this was super charming and honestly possible... so here we are :)

There’s something special about t-shirts.

If Steve were a more fanciful guy he might almost say there was something miraculous about them.

Here’s the thing. He and Danny have different enough body shapes that they’d never be able to fit in the same tailored shirt, or even anything off-the-rack if it involved buttons. But t-shirts?

Steve wears a medium.

Danny wears a medium.

And maybe this wouldn’t matter at all, if Steve were the sort of person who could find comfort and affection in the normal way: hugs, cuddles, whatever.

But he’s not.

So the fact that Danny’s t-shirts fit him perfectly is kind of a godsend.

He doesn’t mean to steal that first one. Danny spends Saturday doing laundry at Steve’s— machines in his complex are down, _again_ — and somehow in the process, one shirt ends up in Steve’s dresser instead.

It’s just an old t-shirt. Plain heather blue, hole in the armpit, white strings where the tag used to be. So unremarkable that Danny doesn’t notice it’s missing. So unremarkable that Steve forgets to grab it every morning for a week.

So it’s still in the drawer when he goes hunting for pajamas after showering that following Friday night.

It’s been a long, shitty week. Nothing he can’t handle, but heavy enough that he turns down the offer of getting drinks with the cousins and slinks back home instead. He’s achy, bruised, sutured in two places. Mourning civilian strangers. Tired in the way that goes beyond the need for sleep; tired in the way, probably, that would make most people seek out a long hug.

In the midst of that gloom he does the next best thing. He puts on Danny’s t-shirt, and lets the brush of its soft, worn material give him the embrace he can’t ask for. Then he crawls into bed, and sleeps without dreaming.

And if he stays in that shirt for the rest of the weekend, there’s nobody there to call him on it.

*

The _other_ thing is, Chin wears a medium t-shirt as well.

*

So whether or not he meant to start it, eventually this is just a Thing Steve Does. He wears Danny’s blue tee when he’s upset. Wears Chin’s maroon tee when he’s got something on his mind that needs thinking-through. Wears Dad’s old undershirts when he’s missing him.

Wears Danny’s Seton Hall Pirates t-shirt— yeah, he’s got two of his partner’s now— mostly on days he just wants to kick back and relax.

He even wears Kamekona’s tacky, oversized face-on-a-shirt sometimes. He actually purchased that one, so it might be cheating, but he counts it anyway.

That said, it’s not like he keeps a checklist. There are people who mean the world to him, whose clothes he never pilfers. Take Kono. It’s not that he wouldn’t gladly have something of hers, for moments he needs to feel comforted but still strong. But, her slender self would be absolutely lost in a medium shirt. Which means, in turn, that Steve would probably feel like a sausage in its casing if he tried to wear anything of hers.

Does he ever get around to returning that old striped towel she forgets at his place one day? That’s a different story.

So, it doesn’t have to be clothes. Plenty of others leave little bits of themselves in his life, in other ways; Steve welcomes them all, whatever form they take.

It’s not quite an inside joke but it’s more than an open secret. When Lou’s gym sneakers go missing around the bullpen, Kono smirks and asks him if he’s checked Steve’s office. Everyone laughs; not a single person questions her implications.

(No, for the record, Steve didn’t steal Lou’s gym sneakers. They turn up eventually.

Lou’s third-favorite coffee mug, that never does.)

*

Jerry’s not his closest friend, of course; but just for sheer physicality, his hoodie becomes Steve’s favorite magpied item. It’s huge on him. And why did nobody ever tell him how comforting it is, wearing oversized clothes? He could have just gone out and bought a big sweatshirt. (No, he couldn’t have; it doesn’t work like that.)

Regardless, Jerry’s hoodie becomes his go-to clothing when he’s feeling absolutely, down-and-out rotten: in physical or emotional misery, or both. That’s in keeping with its roots. He only acquired it when, motion sick and high on morphine, he’d ruined his own shirt in the back of Jerry’s van— not a flattering origin story for a piece of clothing, but there you have it.

It sees a lot of use after the transplant. Even more after the radiation sickness. For weeks at a time it never sees a hanger; it’s either being worn, or being washed, destined to be put back on the moment it’s out of the drier.

Jerry catches him one day. And he acknowledges Steve’s habit with an explicitness that the others never have, chuckling and nodding in Steve’s direction. “Kinda thought you, y’know, messed that thing up. Threw it out. Guess I shoulda known, huh?”

Steve hums in response.

“You okay?”

He’s not. And despite his continued emotional-security pilfering, he’s slowly turning into a man who can ask for comfort in other ways too. So he shakes his head. And Jerry settles wordlessly on the couch beside him and gives him a big bear hug, and between the softness of the hoodie and the safety of Jerry’s arms, Steve finally feels a little better.

*

It’s a feeling he tries to carry with him, through the next months. The team he built— stable for years, after Lou’s arrival— has finally started to change again, as it was always going to. Not long after Max leaves, the cousins leave too.

Kono does so abruptly, with a lack of ceremony that Steve can’t fault her for. But Chin leaves after a proper send-off— a series of them, actually— and Steve says goodbye so many times that it almost feels like it shouldn’t hurt when he finally says the last one.

But it does. Obviously. And when he gets home from dropping Chin off at the airport, he’s barely closed the front door when the tears start stinging his eyes.

This is possibly one of those times he’s supposed to let himself feel it. Pour a drink, curl up, have a good cry. He’s been learning how to do that; Chin’s been one of the people teaching him.

Instead he drags himself upstairs. Finds Chin’s t-shirt in his dresser, swaps it with the one he’s wearing, and dries his eyes on the collar.

Chin taught him a lot about getting on with life, too.

*

Junior _also_ wears a medium t-shirt. Tani _also_ makes the mistake of not watching over her coffee mugs closely enough.

*

And then there’s Joe. Joe, his mentor; Joe, who died in his arms in the shadow of a ponderosa pine. Joe, whose house he lives in for over a month while he maps out his retaliation.

At the beginning, taking Joe’s coat is just a practicality. It’s December, in Montana; and the first time Steve sleeps in Joe’s bed he wakes from the cold as many times as he does from the nightmares. But it’s more than just that, of course. It’s comfort, though Joe himself was not the comforting sort; it’s a memory, and a memorial, and he keeps sleeping in it even when he gets back to Oahu.

But in Hawaii? It’s the opposite of a practicality. It’s a lined suede coat, when he usually sleeps in a t-shirt or simply topless.

Forget waking up to shivers. Now he wakes up itchy with sweat; with the hazy impression of constriction, confinement. For a while he fights through the discomfort. But tonight, it comes coupled with a nightmare, and Steve gets out of bed, goes to his closet— and stows the coat away.

Someday he’ll have to think a lot more about this. Someday, he’ll have to unpack the truth that Joe, who saved his life a dozen times, still hurt him in a lot of other ways.

Not tonight.

Tonight he finds one of Danny’s t-shirts— he’s amassed a collection by now— and puts it on with a sigh of relief. Adds Jerry’s hoodie over top of it. And heads out to the lanai, to hopefully fall back to sleep in the comfort of the nighttime breezes, and the embrace he can enjoy even when he can’t ask for it.

**Author's Note:**

> As I was writing this I also recalled a scene in which Adam gets blood on his suitcase, and Steve tells him that he'll wash the blood out and wear Adam's shirts to a nice dinner. Oh, Steve.
> 
> Okay, enough oneshots (maybe). I'll work on the _Safely Rest_ prequel now.


End file.
